Vermeer's Hat (English)

In one painting a Dutch military officer leans towards a laughing girl. In another, a woman at a window weighs pieces of silver. In a third, fruit spills from a porcelain bowl onto a Turkish carpet. Vermeer's images haunt us with their beauty and mystery. What stories lie behind these exquisitely rendered moments? Through these intimate pictures, Timothy Brook shows the rapidly expanding world of the seventeenth cenrury from the beaver-trappers of Canada and the silver mines of the Americas to Delft itself and the China seas.